Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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9/23, 5 p.m.: Hurricane Rita is not what it was once, and by the moment, it looks more and more like Houston-Galveston will be spared its nightmare.

The storm is down to Category 3, with 125 mph winds, and appears headed for a landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border. It will still be a bad hurricane, with lots of damage, but nothing like Katrina’s widespread devastation.

Houston and Galveston will probably catch the western side of the storm, with winds blowing out to sea instead of from the sea, so the ocean surge will be much less as the storm approaches, and will actually get pulled back out to sea as Rita goes by. Expect some hurricane-force winds in Houston, but probably no extensive damage.

Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, and Lake Charles, La., are likely to bear more of Rita’s burden. It’s not looking healthy on satellite or radar lately, so hopefully it will dwindle even a little more before landfall late Friday or early Saturday. Still, expect some significant damage and flooding from this hurricane.

It still looks doubtful we’ll get much rain out of Rita, though we could use some. Most of the moisture will probably rain out over Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, then what’s left will get swept ahead of a cold front into the Ohio Valley and on toward Canada by mid to late next week.

The historical peak of hurricane season is Sept. 22, so hopefully we’ll see a downward slide from here. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any new storms that could become Stan and Tammy in upcoming days and weeks.

Meanwhile, locally, it is a mid-summer-like hot day. We’ll get a break in the heat as a cold front passes overnight, with maybe some showers and thunderstorms as it goes by.

Rita weakens, turns

9/22, 3 p.m.: Hurricane Rita is beginning to weaken, albeit slowly, as it enters slightly cooler water. It is still a Category 5 storm with 165 mph winds, but will probably come ashore as a Category 4 (131-155 mph winds) or maybe even a Category 3 (111-130 mph winds). It may also begin to suck on some dry air out of Texas, which would weaken it further.

The most significant change in forecasts appears to be that Rita is likely to take a much harder right turn than earlier anticipated, as high pressure to the north shifts eastward. This could bring Rita ashore near the Texas-Louisiana border.

If the eye passes east of Houston-Galveston, it would mean a dramatic reduction on the effects in that metropolitan area, including weaker winds that would be pushing water off the coast rather than toward it. Other than some bayside flooding of Galveston, the area might be spared the feared massive storm surge.

It's too early to make that call just yet, as Rita remains a dangerous hurricane whose final path is somewhat uncertain.

For Southwest Virginia, it appears that effects from Rita will be minimal or absent entirely, as the remnant circulation is likely to stall somewhere over the southern Plains and spin itself out over several days. That area could go from severe drought to severe flooding in a few hours with Rita's heavy downpours.

9/22: 9 a.m.: Hurricane Katrina's crown as the strongest hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has already been blown loose.

On Wednesday evening, Hurricane Rita's central pressure dropped to 897 millibars, or 26.49 inches of mercury. Katrina's lowest pressure was 902 millibars -- it came ashore at 918 millibars. In the world of hurricanes, it's the central pressure -- not the estimated wind speeds, still an inexact science -- that determines a hurricane's strength for historical purposes. Somewhere out in the ocean, I'm quite sure there were 200-mph gusts from both Katrina and Rita.

So now, we wait and see if Rita can do the unthinkable, and surpass Katrina as the most destructive U.S. hurricane on record.

If it were to stay Category 5 and cruise into Galveston Bay or just to the south of there, slapping Galveston and Houston directly with 160 mph or higher winds and a storm surge of greater than 20 feet, it would certainly eclipse even Katrina's devastation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and inundation of New Orleans. The economic impact of devastating two of America's oil and shipping centers within three weeks would be staggering.

But there are some valid reasons Rita may not be able to quite pull that off.

For one, high pressure to the north, responsible for some incredibly late 100-degree heat in the lower Mississippi River Valley and southern Plains, may be too strong and stubborn to allow as hard a northwest turn that would be needed to hammer Houston-Galveston directly. We'll see today and Friday.

Secondly, dry air over Texas will likely be ingested by Rita's circulation, and that may weaken the winds. Also, ocean temperatures over the western Gulf are just a little cooler than over the central and eastern Gulf, the upper air pattern will subtly change to allow less outflow from the storm, and it's just plain hard for a storm of this intensity to maintain that strength for long. Too many things have to be perfect, and the atmosphere is constantly shifting.

Regardless, though, this is a frightening hurricane. The Texas coast is more than Houston-Galveston, and it doesn't take a Category 4 or 5 storm to do some major damage. And we haven't even gotten to the inland flooding threat, especially if the remnants stall, as is quite possible.

It may not be Katrina at landfall, but it won't be a tempest in a teapot, either.

A good place to hit

No offense, but I'm rooting for the King Ranch to take a direct hit from Hurricane Rita.

Remember Hurricane Bret in 1999? It was a Category 4 storm that weakened slightly to Category 3 just before landfall, plowing right into the heart of the King Ranch.

You do remember Hurricane Bret, don't you?

You probably don't -- and that's my point. Even a strong hurricane is forgotten if it makes a direct hit on the most sparsely populated region of the entire U.S. Gulf Coast.

According to the King Ranch Web site, the ranch covers more than 800,000 acres, or larger than the state of Rhode Island, sprawling across essentially all of Kenedy and Kleberg counties midway between Corpus Christi and Brownsville on the South Texas coast.

While there are hundreds of thousands of cattle and a few hundred horses dotting the landscape, only 414 people live in Kenedy County, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. That's a population not much larger than The Roanoke Times workforce in an area roughly the size of Roanoke, Botetourt and Franklin counties combined.

So Hurricane Bret, with its 125 mph winds, slammed into those open rangelands and right into the realm of forgotten hurricanes. It didn't even get its name retired, as Bret was attached to a barely noticed tropical storm earlier this season.

If Rita could meet the same fate -- but it seems to be on a more devious trek.